1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for controlling vehicles.
2. Description of the Related Art
In vehicles of recent years, various portions of a vehicle are driven by being electronically controlled. In general, in the vicinity of a user's (mainly a driver's) seat of the vehicle, physical switches for issuing instructions for driving portions to be electronically controlled as described above are provided.
The user of the vehicle needs to know which switch corresponds to which portion. Therefore, in the case where the user is not get used to the vehicle, the user cannot grasp correspondence relations between portions of the vehicle and the switches, and hence there may be a case where an instruction for driving a desired portion cannot be issued.
In order to avoid such a circumstance, a vehicle control apparatus which allows the user to perform a touch operation with respect to command buttons displayed on a screen, so that an instruction for driving a portion of the vehicle can be issued centrally is proposed. In this vehicle control apparatus, a vehicle image showing the vehicle shape is displayed, and command buttons relating to portions of the vehicle in the vicinity of the corresponding portions of the vehicle image are displayed. For example, a command button for issuing an instruction for locking a door is shown in the vicinity of the corresponding door of the vehicle image. With this display method, the user can grasp the correspondence relation between the portions of the vehicle and the command buttons.
In this vehicle control apparatus, various types of parts such as the doors, windows, and side mirrors are required to be objects of control in the future. However, when the number of types of the objects to be controlled is increased, the number of command buttons that the vehicle control apparatus is to display is also increased. If the number of command buttons to be displayed in one screen increases, the user can hardly grasp the correspondence relation between the portions of the vehicle and the command buttons, and hence the command button can hardly be identified. Consequently, probability of occurrence of operation error of the user is increased.